1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a photograph finishing system and method for providing digital picture services to read a picture image recorded on a film and output it as both a print and an image file in a recording medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
A photograph finishing system has been known which obtains image data by reading a picture recorded in each frame of a photograph film (hereinafter simply called a film) using a film scanner and outputs the image data as a picture print after necessary image processing has been carried out on the image.
Meanwhile, picture image data have been stored in a removable medium as an image file so that the picture image data can be used by a personal computer or the like. This service has been generally carried out on only picture images selected by a customer. Therefore, it has been normal for equipment such as a scanner or an image processing apparatus to be installed separately from the photograph finishing system such as described above. In this case, for providing such a high quality image file that they can be output not only as an image on a monitor but also as a picture print, costly equipment is necessary as the equipment described above. Therefore, a file outputting service charge has not necessarily been inexpensive.
Recently, digital cameras have become wide spread, because of their advantage that the pictures recorded thereby can be easily input to a personal computer. Following the spread of digital cameras, a printing service to output pictures recorded by a digital camera as picture prints has become popular.
However, such a service has fewer users than the printing service using a film or a medium. Furthermore, the number of pixels of a digital image obtained by a digital camera or image processing that a digital camera carries out on the digital image varies depending on the type of a digital camera, which is different from the case where a picture recorded on a film is digitized. Therefore, to print such a digital image, more sophisticated processing must be carried out, which leads to an increase in equipment cost. As a result, in reality, only a portion of service providers have installed an image processing apparatus or a picture printer dedicated to outputting prints of pictures recorded by a digital camera separately from a conventional photograph finishing system.
A demand for a file outputting service to a removable medium as described above has also been increasing recently, following a sharp increase in the popularity of personal computers. Furthermore, a service wherein all customers"" pictures are stored in a server computer having a large capacity disc and installed in a laboratory or the like (hereinafter called an image server) and used for extra prints of the stored pictures has been proposed. Therefore, a method which can output a picture image data file at a lower cost and more efficiently has been desired.
When considered from the point of view of picture quality, it is not preferable to carry out print output and file output separately. When they are carried out separately, it is not necessarily guaranteed that reading conditions or image processing conditions are the same between the output print and file. Therefore, if a print is generated from a picture image file for example, it may not necessarily have the same finish as a simultaneous produced print, and an inconvenience such as an adjustment by trial and error to achieve the same finish may occur.
The present invention therefore provides a picture image outputting method and system whereby an image file by which the finish a customer expects is obtained and output efficiently and provided to the customer at a low cost, when a picture image recorded on a film is output as a print and recorded in a recording medium as an image file.
In other words, a plurality of picture image data obtained in one film handling operation are output as prints by a printer while they are output as files in a predetermined recording medium. In this manner, equipment such as a film scanner can be used efficiently, and print generation and file saving are efficiently carried out at a low cost.
In this case, outputting of both a print and a file is carried out in one film handling operation, which means that image processing is carried out based on only one and the same criterion, if necessary. Therefore, when a picture image data having been recorded in a file are output as a print, the expected finish can be obtained without any adjustment by trial and error.
The processing speed of a medium drive such as a floppy disc drive and that of a printer are not necessarily the same. Therefore, in the above system, even when output of both a print and a file is carried out at the same time, it is possible that the medium having the faster processing speed will be put in an idle state. Likewise, the processing speed is not necessarily balanced between a film scanner and the above two kinds of outputting apparatuses. In other words, the processing ability of the entire system depends on the apparatus with the lowest processing speed among the three kinds of apparatuses. Therefore, no matter how high the performance of the apparatuses other than the lowest one is, its ability may be wasted when incorporated in the above system.
In the present invention, to provide a low cost service without such a waste, each apparatus configuring the system can demonstrate its ability fully.
For this purpose, the numbers of film scanners, printers, and file outputting apparatuses are decided so that the processing ability of a single apparatus x the number of apparatus is almost the same for each kind of apparatus.
Furthermore, if the chances for outputting picture images to a medium are increased by the above high efficiency system, it is expected that orders of prints from the medium will also increase in proportion. Especially, image editing and processing software for a personal computer is becoming more reasonable in price and easier to use recently. Therefore, print orders of processed images are also expected to increase.
Moreover, following future progress in technology, if the price of a digital camera becomes as reasonable as the price of a camera using a film, it is expected that a digital camera will be used as frequently as a camera using a film.
Therefore, the present invention adds medium image obtaining means for taking in an image recorded in a medium and digital camera image obtaining means to the above photograph finishing system so that a print order of a picture image recorded in a medium and brought in to a service provider, or a print order of a picture recorded by a digital camera can be processed promptly without an additional equipment cost.
In this manner, during the time when there is no picture image to read from a film, a digital image taken in from a medium or a digital camera is processed, for example, and the operation rate of the system is improved. Furthermore, by concentrating functions in one system, it becomes possible to share the function for common processing such as image processing, which leads to a reduction in cost and a reduced space for installation.
In other words, the present invention can provide low cost outputting services of a print and a file of images read from a film and furthermore obtained from a medium or a digital camera using one photograph finishing system. In this manner, even a small scale service provider can introduce this system without the problems regarding cost and installation space, and thus service providing locations can expand.